


Keep Whining and See If It Helps

by aameyalli



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen, it's not really major characters just owen & beru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aameyalli/pseuds/aameyalli
Summary: There's a reason Luke can't keep his mouth shut on the Death Star: he can't take the silence.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker
Comments: 1
Kudos: 39





	Keep Whining and See If It Helps

**Author's Note:**

> u ever think about how a new hope happens in the span of a few days and luke just found his family's mutilated bodies bc i do. mini character study!

Putting on the Stormtrooper’s armor was the worst thing Luke could imagine. It was difficult. The plastisteel plates kept shifting and clicking together and pinching his hands as he wriggled his way into the suit. The gauntlets were bulky and stiff, so he kept getting his fingers mixed up, and it was all too big on him. He missed his Tatooine tunics and shawls. Even threadbare and heavy with sand, they were better than this.

That wasn’t why he hated it.

Someone in this suit had killed them. Burned them and dumped the blackened meat and bones in the sand for him to find. His _family_. _Yesterday_. And from the way the troopers shoved through Mos Eisley, with locals scattering before them like they were trying to outrun a sandstorm, they’d done worse to other people. 

Probably this trooper had never been to Tatooine. But they wore the same shiny white skin. The same skin Luke was stepping into now, like a sand crab taking a too-big shell. He felt sick with himself.

He hesitated with the helmet. He didn’t want to complete the transformation. He didn’t want to be trapped inside. But Han was bouncing impatiently on his feet, looking irritated, so Luke pulled the helmet over his head and it sealed itself with a hiss.

The visor was tinted. It was so dark. In the seconds before his eyes adjusted he could see nothing but dunes and smoke and bones and meat and the glow of his hands in front of him, sheathed in white.

Han was fidgeting with his stolen blaster, messing with the safety, and Ben regarded Luke with an awful mixture of pity and suspicion. Luke had to say something. He wanted so badly for both of them to like him. He had to say something, and it couldn’t be babyish, so not about his family, not about all the noise he held inside him. Something, _anything._ Han seemed to like complaining.

“It smells in here,” Luke blurted.

Han blew out his breath, half chuckle, half aggravated sigh, and started off toward the Falcon’s gangway. Luke stumbled after him.

“I think my trooper had jawa juice with breakfast.”

“That’s great, kid.”

“Biggs tricked me into trying it once. He was mad at me because I beat him in a skimmer race but I didn’t know that, I thought he was happy for me, and he said I should have a drink to celebrate and had I ever heard of jawa juice and of course i hadn’t because Uncle Owen never let me come to the cantina with him so I tried it, and not even just a sip, Biggs said I should _shot_ gun it, so I took the tuning knife for the vaporators and I—”

 _“Kid.”_ Han’s helmet twisted sharply. Even with his eyes hidden by the visor, Luke could feel his glare, no longer amused, and the minute flex of his fingers on his blaster. “Will you can it?”

Luke’s mouth snapped shut. His instinct had been right, he guessed. He shouldn’t have let himself mention Uncle Owen.

“I’m going to take out the command center. Stay with the ship. Old man—”

“I will come with you,” Ben said evenly.

“Then why am _I_ staying?” Luke demanded, but they were already gone.

 _Come back,_ he wanted to shout. _Don’t leave me, come back!_

Fear came up in his throat, hard and nauseating, pulling a cold sweat to his face. He could scream. he could scream and—he felt so sure of this—something would _listen_ —not the Imps all around them but something _inside Luke_ would hear him like he’d heard everyone on Alderaan screaming without sound, and the walls of the station would buckle and break and shoot out sparks and everyone on the Death Star would scream along with him. For a moment, the tremor in his heart seemed to move out of him, through the grounded Falcon, as a shudder in the steel. Faintly, the ship’s walls rattled and groaned.

But Luke didn’t really feel like screaming. He let out a breath, sagging a little, and the noise stopped. If anything, Luke felt like crying, but he felt with the same blank, hard certainty that crying wasn’t allowed.

Well, why would he want to cry anyway? This was an _adventure._ They were _heroes._ It was _fun._

He lifted his hands to take off the helmet. If they were going to ditch him anyway— 

_“TK-421, why aren’t you at your post?”_

Luke jumped. The voice was tinny and sharp and filled his whole head.

_“TK-421, do you copy?”_

Luke couldn’t answer. Because all Stormtroopers sounded the same, he thought, with those flat impatient voices, and his would sound too young and high. That was why. Not just because he was having a hard time catching his breath.

Do something. _Move._

He trotted down the gangway. From the command center window, a black-uniformed Imp was watching him. Luke rapped on the side of his own helmet, hoping the lie— _bad mic!_ —would get across without words, and the officer saluted.

Relief and delight—he’d never been able to bluff Uncle Owen. He could do this. He could handle all of it.

He ran after Han and Ben. Even if he hadn’t already seen the command center from below it wouldn’t have been hard to find them. Just follow the sound of blaster fire and roaring Wookiee.

Luke darted in behind them and mashed his hand against the door controls, closing them off from the corridor, and ripped off his helmet. “Between his howling and your blasting everything, it’s a wonder the whole station doesn’t know we’re here.”

“Bring ‘em on,” Han snapped. “I prefer a straight fight to all this sneakin’ around.”

While Ben and the droids went through the escape plan, Luke sank against the door, running a hand nervously through his hair. He would have to put the helmet back on soon, and even if it didn’t really _exactly_ smell like jawa juice, he needed these moments of air that wasn’t stale and close, light that wasn’t filtered through glass, feeling his own face instead of that monster mask.

And then Ben was leaving without him again, and Luke’s soft huff was as much from panic as frustration, because his goodbye sounded so serious and made Luke feel so small. He tried to shake it off. He hadn’t known Ben long enough to have any kind of claim to him and—

_Come back._

And at least—

_Please come back._

At least this time Luke _got_ a goodbye. And now he had a princess to rescue, which was about as brave a mission as you could get.

_Come back, don’t leave me alone again._

Leading Chewy through the corridors, Luke tried to copy the springy confidence of Han’s steps and the cocky way he rested his hand on the holster at his hip. He thought he was getting the hang of it, until Han stopped short at a corner and Luke springily and cockily ran into his back, knocking them both off balance.

“What is it? Darth Vader?” Luke had a feeling it wasn’t Darth Vader, but he couldn’t see around Han’s broad shoulders to check.

“Shh!”

Luke was very conscious of his own breathing, made louder by the helmet, and of Han’s closeness and heat.

After a drawn out moment, Han flicked his hand to signal it was clear, and they went on.

“What _was_ it?” Luke whined.

“Gonk droid,” said Han.

Luke snorted. “Did it scare you?”

“Did it _scare_ me? Do I _look_ like—like a—” Han seemed flustered. “Stop talking.”

Han was definitely warming up to him.

Luke did stop talking, but with each corridor and elevator they passed through, the silence pressed harder on him.

_Come back._

He could hear his own pulse jittering in his ears.

Everything around them was black and white, and the white was hard to look at, like his suns, and he’d found his aunt and uncle in the sands, under the suns, and they were gone and he could never go home and he was alone and his breathing sounded so, so loud, like the rasp of a huge machine.

“I can’t see a thing in this helmet,” he said. It came out shrill. Han didn’t answer and the panic swelled up, like new sand dunes stacked by wind.

When the fighting started again it was a relief. Everything was real and harsh with color, flashing red and blue from blaster shots, and he almost forgot about the helmet until the princess reminded him. And it _was_ an adventure. It _was_ fun. He was a _hero_ now, and heroes always lost their families and they didn’t cry about it and they only ever screamed from anger or triumph.

And Luke wasn’t angry, yet. Just scared of the quiet. Just scared to be alone.


End file.
